130 BIRD WATCHING 



a dwarfing effect upon it, but they were manifestly 

 smaller than any of the gulls which molested them, 

 and this I was not prepared for from the specimens 

 which I have seen in museums or languishing in 

 captivity. That they were ravens however, is, I 

 think, certain from the very peculiar croaking note 

 to which I have alluded, and which they uttered at 

 this time almost constantly. 



When I came to the island these birds had 

 already hatched out their young, of which there 

 were four lying in a loose cradle of what looked 

 like sticks, but could not have been, since these 

 were nowhere procurable. It was a mass of 

 something having the general appearance of a 

 battered and flattened rook's nest, but what the 

 actual materials of which it was constructed were, 

 I am unable to say. The nest was on a ledge 

 half - way down the face of a huge precipice 

 forming one side of a fissure in the coast-line the 

 mouth of an immature fiord dug out in the course 

 of ages by the slow but ceaseless sapping of the 

 sea. From the summit of the opposite side I 

 could look across at and down upon it, having an 

 excellent view. The young birds five in number 

 who were well fledged, and within, perhaps, a 

 fortnight of leaving the nest, lay in it very flatly 

 with their wings half spread out, and so motion- 

 less that for some time, upon first seeing them, I 

 almost thought they must be dead. The sudden yet 

 softly sudden rearing itself up of one with an ex- 

 pressive opening of the beak expressive of " surely, 

 surely, it must be meal - time again now " gave a 

 delightful assurance that this was not the case, and 



